From the scary headlines about a “mortgage meltdown”, you’d think getting a home equity loan these days was harder than finding a scotch and soda in Riyadh. But in fact, homeowners with good credit are having no trouble securing money for renovations. And interest rates have even come down slightly in the past 12 months. They only change is that banks have stopped handing out cash on crazy terms. You’re now required to document your income, for instance, and you must actually have equity in your house to borrow against. Here, the pros and cons of the three most common loans for funding renovations.

The median price of homes that sold in Los Angeles County in January dipped below $500,000 – the first time in more than two and a half years that the price was below that threshold. January’s median price – $496,000 – was 9.7 percent less than the same month last year, according to data provided to the Business Journal by HomeData Corp. of Melville, N.Y. It also was 3 percent lower than the previous month’s median.

What’s more, the number of homes sold declined. A total of 3,379 homes changed hands in January, 38 percent fewer than January 2007. It was less than half the number that sold two Januarys ago in the county.

The Bush administration proposes scaling back or eliminating six Department of Housing and Urban Development programs to save $1.6 billion, while boosting the department’s overall budget by $1 billion, to $38.5 billion.

The administration’s proposed fiscal-year 2009 budget for HUD would include $2 billion for federal block grants for affordable housing for low-income families — a $263 million increase in funding for the HOME Investment Partnerships Program. The increase will help an additional 13,000 families find affordable housing, HUD said.

Commercial and multifamily mortgage bankers’ loan originations sank by double digits in the fourth quarter of 2007 when compared to a year earlier, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported today in a quarterly survey.

Total fourth-quarter originations dropped 16 percent below the level recorded in fourth-quarter 2006, with the decrease seen across most property types and investor groups, according to the MBA’s Quarterly Survey of Commercial/Multifamily Mortgage Bankers Originations.

“The slowdown comes most directly from disruptions in the capital markets, although a few remaining large portfolio transactions continued to buoy the numbers,” said Jamie Woodwell, MBA’s senior director of commercial/multifamily research. “It’s important to note that while commercial/multifamily origination volumes have slowed, the underlying fundamentals of commercial and multifamily properties, loans and bonds generally remain quite strong.”

The income required to buy a median-priced home has dropped in many markets, though high housing costs have put home ownership out of reach for many workers in high-growth occupations, according to a study released this week by a housing research center.

Workers in the five highest-growth occupations — including registered nurses, retail salespersons, customer service representatives, food preparation workers and office clerks — cannot afford to buy a typical home in most of the 201 metro areas studied, according to the Center for Housing Research. The center, which receives financial support from Bank of America, the Fannie Mae Foundation, Freddie Mac, Merrill Lynch Community Development Co. LLC, and other organizations, is an affiliate of the National Housing Conference.